


The Price of Armageddon

by Meridae



Series: After Armageddon [1]
Category: In Nomine
Genre: Armageddon, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-03
Updated: 2014-05-03
Packaged: 2018-01-21 19:56:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1562144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meridae/pseuds/Meridae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Seraph rescues a Lilim during Armageddon, and they just might have to help rebuild the world. Not every Superior wanted Armageddon to come. Not every Celestial is going to let the world go to Hell... or Heaven.</p>
<p>To some Celestials, stalemate was the best solution.</p>
<p>Too bad that's not an option anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Price of Battle

I'm slumped against the wall, breathing heavily. It's unnecessary, but it calms me. I wipe my forehead, brushing away the dark green hairs clinging with sweat to my brow. I collect myself, and cast my eyes downwards. Looking at the sight... yesterday, I'm sure I would have felt sick. Today, I just feel numb. Blood is splashed across my skin, too dark and vivid against the pale green. I reach up, running my fingers across my horns, hoping that perhaps they would remain intact. No such luck. One horn is broken halfway, and I can barely bring myself to touch the other. Perhaps it will be intact, but the damage, though subtle, is there, for hairline cracks mark the toll of Armageddon.

It's a nice day. Clear blue sky, sun shining, all that stuff. Shame about all the clouds of Celestials and... robots, it looks like. And there's the Archangel of Lightning, it seems, for where else would those bolts of electricity be coming from? Technology never really did build sturdy equipment.

Then there's a Seraph next to me, smooth coils and feathers against my skin. I can barely hold my knife, by now. But still, the weight of the small, sharp blade is comforting in my hand. "Stay back," I murmur, the words dropping limply from my mouth. "I can fight still."

The Seraph is silent for a long moment, and I wait for the strike to come, rending my Forces apart. But the Seraph does not strike, but merely speaks. "You believe you can fight, but not for long. You say this because you wish me to leave, and not destroy you. The Truth is... you are in no shape to fight, Tempter."

I try to laugh, the sound choking in my throat. "Then I suppose you're here to deliver the final blow?"

The Seraph's coils, shimmering a pale blue lighter than the Celestial-choked sky, begin to wrap around me, gently pulling me to the Seraph. "No," the Seraph replies. "I wish only to speak with you. Aunt."

I barely contain the screech attempting to rise up from my throat. "Aunt?" I hiss, surprise overcoming the numbness.

"My mother was a Bright Lilim," the Seraph replies, seeming matter-of-fact even in the midst of Armageddon. 

I clutch the knife closer to me, and... I cannot use it. Perhaps I will die here. I never did want to fight in Armageddon. My Free sisters went to ground, and I... tried. But I could not escape the draft in time. And now I am here, with a Seraph coiled around me, too numb to use the knife, too numb to fight. "There are no Bright Lilim," I whisper, weakness threaded through every word. 

The Seraph snorted. "I am no Balseraph. I do not lie."

"Stranger things have happened, I suppose." It's not like this means anything, after all. Words can't do anything, stop anything. Despite all efforts, Armageddon could not be denied. Seraphim are my enemies, and not going to let me survive. 

The Seraph pulls me sideways as a lightning bolt hits mere yards away, electricity crackling through the air in its wake. "Perhaps we should continue this conversation somewhere else." And then we are flying, and I'm pulled into the air in the coils of a Seraph.  
All I can do is hang on.

_______________________

There are fewer robots in the air, now. Instead, swarms of bugs are flying through, clustering around the few remaining robots. A large black bird of some indeterminate type is diving through the swarms, and the bugs part in its wake. The bird's head then turns to face me as it yanks a cluster of wires out of one of Technology's minions, and with a quick, efficient toss of circuitry, it's flapping towards me faster than the Seraph can pull me out of the way. It drives its beak into my flesh, somehow. I do not suppose I am surprised. Corporeal, Ethereal, Celestial... it doesn't really matter, right now. The three realms are open to each other, as Vessels are cast on and off like rags in a strong wind. 

It's dizzying, like up and down have decided to start dancing the polka, and then my connection to my Vessel breaks, my last Corporeal Force pulled away in the beak of a bird. The bird flies away, and the Force... is bound into an Elohite with lizard-green eyes, who then shifts into a lizard the color of those vivid eyes and leaps at what must be a Fallen Servitor of Jordi, a crazed hawk tearing at anything in reach.

Disturbance crashes around me as the Seraph flies away from the battle, away from the tumbling mass of Fire to the east, towards the ruins of a city.

"I do wonder how we're anchored to the Corporeal right now, but I suppose the Corporeal and the Celestial are... rather the same thing, right now." The Seraph still seems so matter-of-fact, as if rescuing a Lilim during Armageddon is the most normal thing in the world. 

I do not respond. There is no reason to respond. I am merely hanging limply from the coils of a Seraph, going wherever it shall take me. 

At least I will die in a city, even a broken city, a place where life once bustled, instead of a bloody field of torn earth.

A great crash of disturbance ripples out from the east, and then...

Pain. My ears scream in protest of the enormous shattered screech of a Demon Prince being relinquished to the Symphony. It seems like it will last forever, a wail rushing across the Corporeal and Celestial alike, breaking all it touches.

Then it ends, and the lesser disturbance clashes once again.

_______________________

The Seraph lands and wraps smoothly into her Vessel, and suddenly I am in the long, dark arms of a tall woman, her deep brown hair curling down around me. "I am Valiah," she whispers. She gently places me down on the cracked and fractured concrete, and then she is walking towards a battered sliding door with shattered glass panes.

I lie there, for a moment. Just Lilim and concrete, and disturbance, and Armageddon.

I spare a glance for the field behind me, where the shadows of Celestials still do battle. And in front of me is...

A city. A door. A Seraph. An unknown.

I push myself off the concrete. Whatever Valiah has planned is better than waiting for the winners to go looking for survivors.

So I start walking towards the door, carefully picking my way through broken glass.


	2. Superior Interlude 1: Gabriel and Belial

The forest is burning.

Novalis would have stopped us, once. Her precious precious trees burning, hurting her- she doesn't know what hurting means. 

He is striking at me, resonance lashing out, but I am faster, faster than him, he cannot catch a Wheel. Once one of us would have retreated, once we would have restricted ourselves in restraining bolts of Vessels.

But that is not now, now is the time for action, now is the time for motion, now is the time to end the friction.

I sweep around him spinning through the air and every flame is a blade, and another of his Word-Forces catches and tears away. 

He still can't catch me, still can't touch me, still can't scratch me, until suddenly his resonance lashes at my Forces, and one of the flaming bits of self and Fire tears away, a Word-Force gone, sweep around again, shift the tactics now, can't let him predict me.

I don't know how long it's been anymore, the forest is almost gone to ashes, leaves replaced by floating embers, grass long charred away. Even the stones have great scorched gouges. Weakened, both of us, friction lessened, am I winning? Don't know can't know until suddenly I tear away something not a Word-Force and he screams like his Fire is going out. And next time I feel it, his resonance is weaker. 

I don't know how long it takes, but the forest goes to ashes and the ashes cool before I feel how weak he has become, how fragile his Forces have become, and I tear off another Celestial Force and then he screams again, and the Symphony screams with him, disturbance, great howls of disturbance ripping through the Corporeal (Celestial?) and then he is gone, and there is a man lying on the ground.

The friction ceases. It has been so long since before it came. It feels almost as if I have lost something, for a brief moment... but then the feeling fades, and I have gained myself. 

I pick up the Remnant in a coil of flame, and I am fast still, not as fast, my Forces too have been torn, but I am fast still, and soon I have reached a body of water, all the humans nearby gone and nobody to see me, but that doesn't matter anymore.

I do not hesitate to cast him into the lake.


End file.
